The Green Bay School District needs to reduce staff, but it's still hiring. Here's why
Editor's note: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect the number of staff members that must be reduced in the Green Bay School District.
GREEN BAY — With the start of school less than a week away, the Green Bay School District still needs to fill 34 full-time classroom and specialty teaching positions, along with 120 support staff openings.
Last school year, over 200 certified staff members resigned or retired from the district. Certified staff include classroom teachers, specialty teachers, library media specialists, occupational therapists and other instructional roles.
The district typically has over 3,600 full-time equivalent employees, including substitute teachers and seasonal staff, according to the district's director of communications, Lori Blakeslee. But with declining student enrollment since 2016, the district needs to right-size.
According to the preliminary budget presented in June, the district needs to reduce its staff by about 341 full-time equivalent employees to match enrollment.
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So why is it still hiring?
The district plans to downsize staff through attrition, either retirements or staff leaving the Green Bay schools. Then it will evaluate whether those positions need to be filled or if someone already employed by the district can be moved into that role.
The district has not discussed layoffs, and positions it's hiring for have been evaluated as to whether they need to be backfilled, Blakeslee said.
Staff salaries and benefits make up the largest costs for the district, and nearly two-thirds of its state funding is partly based on student enrollment. During the pandemic, the district hired an additional 100 employees to address COVID-19 related learning disruption and increased student needs.
It used federal pandemic relief money, known as ESSER, to cover the costs of those additional staff members, but that funding runs out in September 2024. More staff, fewer students, inflation and the end of the federal pandemic funding leaves the district facing a multimillion dollar budget deficit come the 2024-25 school year.
In August, the Green Bay School Board approved 8% salary increases for all employees, which sets the district up for a $14 million budget deficit by next year. By the 2025-26 school year, that gap could widen to $20 million, according to the June preliminary budget presentation.
The district hopes to address this fiscal cliff, in part, through its facilities master plan, which will reconfigure and consolidate schools to reduce operating costs by 10%. A community task force recommended closing 11 schools in the district. The board voted to close one so far: Wequiock Elementary.
School closures will also help reduce staff.
"When you close a school, you have one less principal, custodian, school secretary, library media specialist, food service worker, etc.," Blakeslee wrote in an email. "In addition, by consolidating schools, we are also able to reduce the numbers of teachers, monitors and paraprofessionals needed."
The district is "right on track" with hiring compared to previous years, Blakeslee said. The number of open positions listed on the state educator hiring platform can be misleading since the district could be in the hiring process while the position is still posted.
To help recruit, the district hosted its first ever walk-in job fair in August for full-time and part-time workers, along with substitute teachers and support staff.
The district is also offering $1,000 sign-on bonuses for some positions like bilingual and foreign language teachers.
Blakeslee said the district is trying to fill food service, custodial, bilingual teaching, special education teaching, paraprofessional and monitor positions. For support staff, many of the openings are part-time, extracurricular positions like athletics coaches.
Danielle DuClos is a Report for America corps member who covers K-12 education for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at dduclos@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter @danielle_duclos. You can directly support her work with a tax-deductible donation at GreenBayPressGazette.com/RFA or by check made out to The GroundTruth Project with subject line Report for America Green Bay Press Gazette Campaign. Address: The GroundTruth Project, Lockbox Services, 9450 SW Gemini Drive, PMB 46837, Beaverton, Oregon 97008-7105.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Here's why Green Bay Schools is hiring, despite needing to downsize.
